We’ve all had that second: contemporary out of the bathe, hair dripping in all places, when the doorbell rings. Canadian photographer Christy Grinton noticed an analogous state of affairs play out within the animal kingdom when a mom gray squirrel, mid-nest relocation, peeked out from a vibrant gap in tree bark along with her soaking moist fur plastered to her head.
The ensuing picture, titled Bad Hair Day, has earned Grinton a finalist spot among the many 40 standout photos within the 2025 Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards. It captures the squirrel rising from a cavity in brilliantly coloured bark, her usually fluffy coat reworked into spiky, waterlogged tufts.
It’s nature’s model of a nasty hair day, made all of the extra hanging by the virtually painterly backdrop of peeling tree bark, streaked with vivid yellows, oranges and charred browns, that frames her matted look.
Technical challenge
Grinton shot the image in downtown Victoria, British Columbia, using settings that reveal the challenging conditions: 1/640 second at f/6.3, ISO4000 – with her 100-500mm set to 363mm. That remarkably high ISO – well into the range where older cameras would produce unusable noise – tells us this was far from ideal lighting. The overcast morning, combined with the need for a fast shutter speed to freeze the squirrel’s movement, forced her to push the R5 Mark II’s sensor hard.
The lens’s versatile zoom range meant she could adjust her framing instantly as the situation unfolded, without needing to reposition. The f/6.3 aperture at this focal length provided enough depth of field to keep both the squirrel and the colorful bark texture sharp while the background softly fades.
Recognizing the moment
What separates great wildlife photography from the merely competent is the ability to anticipate. And that’s precisely what happened here. “I was in a local park when I saw a grey blur run by,” Grinton recalls. “When I looked closer, I saw a mother grey squirrel was relocating her babies to a new nest. The grass was dewy that morning, so she was getting a wet tail as she ran through the grass.”
Rather than simply documenting the relocation, Grinton waited for something unexpected… and was rewarded when the waterlogged squirrel paused to peek out from her new nest cavity, her fur transformed into comic spikes.
That readiness – combined with patience, a keen eye for anthropomorphic humor and a camera capable of delivering clean images – resulted in one of 2025’s most charming wildlife photographs. It all goes to show that sometimes the best nature images aren’t of dramatic predator-prey interactions or stunning landscapes, but simply a bedraggled mother having what we’d all recognize as a very bad hair day indeed.